To celebrate World Mental Health Day 2024 we are highlighting a new Breathe Creative project which is offering creativity for wellbeing activities for cancer patients in Cardiff. World Mental Health Day is an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma.
Our new ‘Art Cart’ project is based at Velindre Cancer Centre (Velindre University NHS Trust) in Cardiff, known as the ‘Hospital of Hope’, and providing specialist services to over 1.5 million people in South East Wales and beyond.
Our therapeutic arts facilitator Katja Stiller is facilitating weekly creative arts sessions with patients on the ward, offering a variety of grounding and mindfulness techniques to help participants relax, find their creative flow and shift their focus away from their illness towards their strengths and the things which they enjoy. Some of the activities have included focusing on the senses – with painting, drawing, making collages, making cards, creative writing, recording voices and sounds, and making lavender bags. These sessions take place at the patients’ bedsides working one to one with the patients as well as in small groups with visiting friends and family members sometimes joining in. We work with a person-centred approach, listening to the individuals and letting them decide how much or how little they want to do. The patients have ownership of the process and the end products (their art work), and they can decide if they would like to share any of the artwork they have created with a wider audience.
We have had great feedback about this new pilot project from the participants, families and ward staff, who all say that these sessions positively change the atmosphere in the ward and boost wellbeing:
’The art therapy has really had a positive impact on my inpatient stay. Having someone to talk to and do some mindful drawing has calmed my anxiety during treatment …”
Thank you to funding and support from Velindre University NHS Trust, The Arts Council of Wales and The National Lottery Community Fund.